State says chicken can't cross the road
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George Schenk, owner of American Flatbread in Waitsfield, looks over an injunction from the Vermont Health Department on Thursday. Jeb Wallace-Brodeur/Times Argus |
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By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: June 16, 2006
American Flatbread, an iconic Waitsfield restaurant and frozen pizza purveyor, was stymied Thursday in plans to protest the state's agriculture and food rules tonight by serving up local chicken raised at a farm just across Route 100.
An injunction was issued Thursday at the request of the Vermont Department of Health, stopping the eatery from serving meat from the nearby Gaylord family farm.
The conflict is a symptom of a food system that puts large-scale industrial operations ahead of local producers who grow healthy natural foods, and damages efforts to establish small-scale diverse agriculture in Vermont, according to the farmer and the restaurateur.
But the regulations are needed to protect public health, especially when dealing with poultry, state agriculture and health officials said.
The problem, according to George Schenk, founder and president of American Flatbread, is that without a costly processing facility, local farmers like the Gaylords cannot get their meat inspected for retail sale. Therefore, while they can sell chickens at their farm, they can't sell them to restaurants and stores. American Flatbread makes about 700,000 pizzas a year, and would love to buy local chicken, Schenk said."They are preventing us from serving the chicken from our neighbor across the road," he said. "If we were to serve it, we would be in contempt of court."
Connie Gaylord, who runs the Waitsfield farm with her father, said she wonders what the difference is between selling chicken in a restaurant and selling it from a farmstand.
"I don't understand why it has to be this strict," she said. "Why is it OK if I sell it off my farm, but I can't sell it to George?"
However, there is a fundamental distinction between selling uninspected meat from a farm, where consumers know what they are buying and can see the operation firsthand, and being served a flatbread with meat that diners naturally assume has been inspected, said Interim Commissioner of Health Sharon Moffatt.
"The regulations are there to protect the consumer entering into that restaurant and assuming the products have been fully inspected and are safe," she said.
Schenk transforms his commercial bakery into a much-written up restaurant that draws standing room only crowds on Friday and Saturday nights. The rest of the time the bakery, along with its other locations in Middlebury and California, sends flatbreads to groceries in 45 states.
Schenk was going to host a party with music, a speaker, films and chicken flatbread made with meat from the Gaylord farm as a way to protest the state rules.
Since the injunction, however, he cannot risk it, Schenk said. So while the party is scheduled to go on, the chicken will not.
Violating the injunction could put the company's food license at risk, as well as represent contempt of court, according to state officials.
Schenk said he hopes the creation of a committee he and state officials agreed to form will find a solution, he said.
The collaboration between American Flatbread and the Gaylords is the kind of market the state wants to encourage, said David Lane, assistant secretary of agriculture for development.
But farms must build covered, inspectable slaughtering and processing facilities to safely sell products through retail outlets, with washable walls, hot-and-cold running water and other requirements, he said.
But doing that for their farm, which sells fewer than 1,000 chickens a year, would force them to get bigger, spend more and hire more people, Connie Gaylord said.
"Why force us to do something which means we get bigger," she said. "It is not helping the little guys."
"Why can't local just stay local? Why does everything have to come from far away," Gaylord said. "It's not feasible financially for us right now" to build a butchering facility.
Nobody has gotten sick from eating the chickens they raise and sell, Gaylord said.
"This was fundamentally wrong," Schenk said. "This is some of the best food that our society makes. Their work should be celebrated and honored."
"Farming is already a hard enough thing as it is. We have created a system that adds to their burdens," said Schenk. He said while he disagrees with them, the state officials he has dealt with have been "thoughtful, respectful and kind."
As for Lane of the Agency of Agriculture, he hopes to attend the event on Friday night.
Farmers are pretty resourceful about figuring out how to deal with the regulations and build facilities that comply with the rules, he said.
"If someone was selling to restaurants I think the economics are probably there to build a facility," he said. "Farmers are pretty ingenious and pretty resourceful in how they can set up these small slaughtering facilities."
Amy Shollenberger of the advocacy group Rural Vermont, which helped organize the Waitsfield event, said real changes in the regulations are needed — not a study group.
"Farmers have been asking for help with this situation for several years and the Douglas administration has been ignoring them at best," she said. "We are glad that flatbread has raised the issue, but we don't have a lot of hope (the agency) will pay attention to family farmers."
Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@timesargus.com.
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